Soviet-era sets, glitches galore... but at last! TV news to revoke the woke
JAN MOIR ON THE BIRTH OF GB NEWS
GB News, the new TV service, beat established rivals on its launch night. It pulled in 164,000 viewers between 7pm and 11pm on Sunday, compared with 133,000 for the BBC’s news channel or the
7,000 that were watching Sky News, it said – despite some early technical glitches. Here, JAN MOIR assesses its first 24 hours.
Bedevilled with technical issues and looking as if it was shot on someone’s phone, GB News lurched into life over the weekend, a tottering, new-born Bambi trying to find its feet among the big beasts of what its presenters frequently and disparagingly referred to as ‘the mainstream media’.
Monarch of the glen Andrew Neil launched the station himself on Sunday evening – apparently from inside a shipping container painted nightclub black.
His face was a pink fried egg looming through the gloom, his hair somehow corralled into a neat Weetabix of curls, his words hopelessly out of sync. like david Bowie before him, Andrew was going to sit right down, waiting for the gift of sound and vision. it never came.
even at the launch of his own flagship show last night, simultaneous words and pictures still seem to be beyond the capabilities of the new television station, the first news network to be launched in this country for 24 years.
The sound was bad, the lighting worse, the sets were Soviet- era hideous. Coloured wands of neon light, smoked glass, a dung- coloured, wipe- clean sofa? We appeared to be trapped in the reception of the Crossroads motel before moving on to the chillax area of a suburban swingers’ club for a flaming sambuca or three.
But so what? Neil is a brilliant man whose powerful opening monologue promised that GB News would ‘not be another echo chamber for the metropolitan mindset that already dominates so much of the media’. Hear, hear. God knows, the country is crying out for this, a long-overdue fightback to revoke the woke.
in an introductory segment rather like a speed-dating session, we met all the presenters and reporters – and i was touched by the station’s view that having regional correspondents is somehow novel and unique.
Many of the lightly groomed stars talked of their families; a sister who was a head teacher, a relative who worked on the checkout at Sainsbury’s. Hey ho, you know. They wanted us to know that they were Ordinary People Just like Us. YET despite being promised a new start and a fresh outlook, guests on Sunday night included Carole Malone, Allison Pearson and Nigel Farage, plus the good lords Sumption & Sugar.
Hats off to GB News for winkling out these shy woodland creatures from their hiding places! Why haven’t we heard from them before, with their refreshing take on events?
On the breakfast show on Monday, one of the presenters even asked: ‘ When was the last time you saw a bobby on the beat?’ Hardly ground-breaking, although everyone’s heart seemed to be in the right place.
‘The motivation for me being here – i want to fight for ordinary people. This is a mission for me, it is not a job,’ said presenter Gloria de Piero, which is sort of what she always says in every new media job.
‘We want to do Westminster in a different way, not the gotcha questions,’ said political correspondent Tom Harwood. ‘We don’t want to regurgitate what the politicians tell us.’ less than 24 hours later, the station was trumpeting an ‘exclusive interview’ with Home Secretary Priti Patel, which made waves because she ‘refused’ to ‘condemn’ those fans who booed england players for taking the knee. Gotcha indeed.
elsewhere, everyone was as keen as english mustard.
‘i never imagined i would be sitting here tonight with my own Tv show,’ said Michelle dewberry. You’re not the only one, darling.
‘it’s so exciting to be on. This is an exciting new challenge, yes it is very, very exciting,’ said an excited Kirsty Gallacher. ‘For me it is all about Britain right now.’ Good to hear! However, as openings go, GB News’s launch could not have been more calamitous.
Yet i cannot be too critical or scoff at its first-night failings. For to launch a television station right now is just so brave, daring and admirable – especially one that provides a counterpoint to the dominant, lefty groupthink that currently chokes our airwaves. FOR example? The sneery, overt political philosophy of many who work for BBC news; the unwatchable dogma of Channel 4 news; the dreary Tom Bradby plugging his brand of wokery on iTv? Shaking up that smug hegemony is long overdue and hugely welcome.
And while GB News had its teething troubles, it was sincere in its mission to create a safe space for the alternative voices of the right, which tend to be dismissed or disparaged elsewhere. However, i’m not sure how much of overwrought dan Wootton a nation can take: A man who seems to host his late evening show after 12 espressos and a mandatory thousand volts from the outrage manufacture machine.
‘i don’t want to live in Singapore when you get thrown in jail if you drop some chewing gum on the train,’ he screamed at one point, almost in tears. elsewhere he was begging for a ‘return of our Godgiven civil liberties’.
Yesterday morning, the technical issues got even worse when the correspondents went out on the road. everyone sounded as if they were broadcasting from the bottom of a well.
reporting from the Scottish Borders, Nancy Fielder went to a distillery and a tweed mill – original! i quite wanted to know what Tweed Man had to say, but couldn’t hear a thing.
What kind of a station is GB News? Too soon to say. Sometimes
Going live: Andrew Neil waits to go on air on Sunday it is hard news, sometimes it is a social media guru called rebecca Hutson, sometimes it is a body language expert talking the usual cobblers.
And for a television station that doesn’t want to follow the mainstream media, they sure rely on a lot of newspaper headlines – because it is still newspapers like us who set the news agenda, even now. Not them. Just saying.
For better or worse, GB News is out there, taking its first faltering steps in the great media forest.
Whatever you think of it so far, one can only admire how incredibly plucky and bold of all concerned to launch it, take part in it, believe in it and do it.
it is wild and woolly, but there are more encouraging signs than there are missteps.
The opening programme drew an average audience that managed to beat both BBC News and Sky News.
GB News are on to something: Something big and something good for democracy.
So i smash my champagne bottle of benevolence upon their hull of chutzpah and wish them all the best.
Andrew Neil and GB News, your country needs you. But most of all we need to hear you – so please sort out the technical issues, pronto.